Alice’s Trip: Projections On a Budget 1

My colleague Jennifer Nostrala is  demonstrating her playwriting and directing chops this fall, staging a new adaptation of Lewis Carrol’s Alice stories.   Entitled Alice’s Trip: A Movement Adventure,  it is a movement-heavy treatment of the subject in 19 scenes.  Jennifer’s script contains much of the most iconic of Carrol’s dialogue but relies heavily on movement and music that she  describes throughout the text. She has also specified the use of projected imagery integral to the treatment.  Over the course of the past month, I have been developing the environment for the production.  Within the next few weeks we will be refining ideas for  the lighting, which I am also doing,  and for the projections, which are being designed and implemented by a pair of our students.

The play begins with Alice onstage and with the cast sitting on chairs, watching the beginning of a play on a puppet stage.  When a puppet version of herself appears, Alice begins to interact  with  it.   I conceived the panels stage left and right as abstractions of playing cards.  They will be an off-white creme color in order to most effectively serve as surfaces upon which colored and textured light can shine and upon which certain digital images and video can be projected.

In the following scene, the puppet stage “disappears” and is replaced with an oversized cut-out version of the proscenium drapery  from the puppet stage which files in just as the puppet stage rolls upstage beneath it.  This larger  proscenium will remain onstage for the following 17 scenes serving as a projection surface for additional imagery throughout and as a screen for some shadow work as actors walk between it and rear-lighting sources.  The side screens remain throughout continuing to take projections and shadow work

Many of the intervening scenes rely upon additional scenic elements represented by a series of simple frame “doorways” which stand in as doors, train cars and other elements and support interesting and intriguing choreography.  Four  16″ x 16″ x 16″ framed cubes , a box and a small door are also used by  the cast of 12 in showing us the events of the play.  The chairs are also recurring elements. Through innovative staging and directing choices, these simple elements help the cast represent iconic scenes from the story including the Garden of locked Doors, Conversation With a Caterpillar, the Tea Party, the  Lobster-Quadrille, the Tart Trial,  Through the Looking Glass, the Battle With the Jabberwocky, The Train Ride, Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, and Humpty Dumpty and His Wall.  The final scene of the play is a redux of the first, with the return of the puppet stage and of Alice’s puppet alter self .

Though this setting appears simple, this appearance is deceptive.  A lot of work and calculation has gone into (and will continue to go into) the process of designing the onstage elements and particularly into the screens.    Auteur Jennifer Nostrala initially requested that  projections on all screens be done from the back.  This is so that we can combine video with shadow projections (with cast members and objects being placed upstage of the screens to cast interesting and sometimes surprising shadows in the running video upon the screens)  This complicates the design of the screens in several ways.

The first challenge of rear projecting onto these screens is that to do so, they  must be made of a material that will transmit rear projection.  I usually use RP screens from manufacturers such as Rosco Laboratories.  Unfortunately, all of the previous projects that we have done with rear screen projection material have been smaller projects (meaning that any remaining material is cut into too-small pieces) and used black screen.  Since we need white (or ideally off-white) for this setting, nothing in stock is suitable.  Nor is our budget sufficient to buy this pricy product which currently runs $18.30 per yard (for 55″ widths) from Rose Brand (one of the premiere suppliers of theatrical fabrics and supplies).  Since each screen requires approximately 12 yards of material, the cost of rear projection screen for the pair of side screens approaches $450.00.  Even though each of the side screens are designed as 3 smaller screens (this for both aesthetic and touring purposes) each of them would require a tricky seam where the width of the largest of each trio of screens exceeds the 55″ width of the screen material.  With the inclusion of the 14′-6′ x 18′ central proscenium screen adding another $366 worth of  screen material (20 yards @ $18.30) and three long tricky seams, the cost of rear projection screen material would account for nearly 2/3 of our set budget.  Rose Brand will custom-fabricate screens to larger dimensions, welding the narrow strips together thus eliminating the never-quite-successful on-site taping of the seams. This process requires significant lead time and carries a premium price tag.  At $4.96 per square foot, a custom-welded 14′-6″ x 18′ prices out to almost $1,300.00!

Having attended a workshop at the United States Institute of Theatre Technology’s 2012 Convention in Long Beach during March of this year, on non-traditional projection surfaces. I knew from the demonstration that simple theatrical muslin (of the variety used widely by theatres for any number of purposes) makes a decent rear-projection surface.  While not as superior a product for the purpose, it was eminently more affordable.  Buying 14′-6″ wide heavy weight muslin @  $24.80 per yard, I only spent about $35o on the necessary 14 yards.

A second challenge of rear projection is on of supporting the screen securely, while also keeping the entire back of the screen surface free of obstruction.  The center screen surface is an easy one to accomplish since the screen can be suspended from overhead battens of the fly system common to many stages.  However, the side screens sit at an angle to the overhead battens.  The solution that I came up with was to support the screens from the back with custom-designed stage braces on each side, leaving the center free for projection.  Since these braces will be in full view of the audience, and since the cast needs to have free access from onstage to immediately behind the screens for some of the shadow work, these jacks are designed of square steel tube to resemble some of the framing  seen by the audience elsewhere on the setting and to echo the line of the screens they support while also allowing the cast to pass through  them unimpeded.

As challenging as creating the screens are, probably the greatest challenge of these projections rests in the projectors, the media content and the technology and software necessary to deliver the content to the screens.  These will be subjects for this blog in upcoming weeks.

Meanwhile, that’s enough for now! Have fun!  But be safe!

SJM

Construction of Stairs for the Stage: 2

While many of the practices for constructing stairs for the stage rely upon the brute structural strength of certain members of the unit, those same practices tend to result in  units that are heavier than necessary.  Much as unit-body construction in the automobile industry lead  to cars that are lighter and stronger, constructing scenery for the stage in a manner where every part contributes to the strength of the overall unit, can yield to improved strength and to savings in weight.

In the case of the stair unit, one key is to enlist the riser as a weight-bearing feature.  Other strategies to creating stronger construction include eliminating fastener-into-edge of plywood joints, enlisting face-to-face glue joints and relying on compression to support members where possible. Below is an orthographic drawing for a stair unit that we recently built for a production of Alice’s Trip (a theatrical piece devised by colleague Jennifer Nostrala based upon Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol).

This unit is an open-carriage dependent stair.  Notice that it is 6′ in width, but features only two carriages (one at each end).  Rather than relying upon multiple internal carriages or upon beefy stringers, the riser provides the horizontal structural support for the treads.  While the riser is constructed of 1/2″ ply in this case, I often use 1/4″ ply for the riser in step units of 4′ width or less.

Each riser is firmly attached to stringers made of 1×2″ true lumber.  I often use 1×2 (3/4″ x 1 1/2″) with good results. The stringers are securely glued to the riser.  Fasteners such as staples or screws hold the parts firmly together while the glue dries, creating a member not unlike the manufactured I-Beam joists used in much modern home construction. The riser is attached to the carriage with fasteners through the face of the riser into the edge of the carriage and  by  fasteners through the carriage and into the stringers.

In order for the riser to pick up both stringers, it must notch around the carriage below the lower step.   The notched riser minimally increases construction time, but serves an additional structural purpose.  The notched riser transfers the weight of the attached steps to the carriage through the notches.

Photo of Alice’s Trip step unit under construction showing carriages and 6 of the 8 stringers.

I prefer to cut he carriage is cut out of 3/4″ plywood instead of out of lumber.   I find 3/4″ ply more uniform, stable, dependable and cheaper than 1x 12 which often features knots, cupping and warpage.  Since the maximum length of standard  3/4″ plywood is 8′, I can usually build a stair unit of up to 7 steps with unbroken  3/4″ ply carriages.  Normally, I rip the plywood to 12″ and cut the sawtooth profile of the stair from one side.  If the stair will require a lot of weight, or on the longer spans, I rip the plywood to a wider width (14″ or so) if the design of the stairs will permit.  For taller units with more than 7 steps, I have laminated layers of 1/2″ ply or 3/4″ play to create the equivalent of an engineered beam.  I try to avoid using 2×12 for open-carriage stair carriages because of issues with quality and uniformity and the tendency of the points of the saw-tooth profile to chip off along the grain lines.

As a rule, I build dependent style step units.  Though it would be easy enough to build 3 or 4 step units  in independent style, I find that dependent construction reduces material (potentially cost) and weight.  The dependent style stair usually stores more compactly than the independent stair and this helps to maximize the limited storage that plagues many theatres.   As I pointed out in last week’s blog, If  one needs a self-supporting stair unit, it is usually not much of a chore to add some legs to the elevated end of a dependent unit to transform it temporarily into an independent one.

Every step in a step unit consists of a Rise (the height from one step tread to another) and a Run (roughly the depth of the tread).  Though humans are quite varied and adaptable, there is only a small range of rise and run combinations that can be comfortably navigated by a person climbing stairs.  I use, what I call “the rule of 18”.   Simply stated, this rule restricts the sum of the rise and the run of a single step to 18″.  Thus, a step with a 6″ rise requires a 12″ deep step.  Similarly an 8″ rise dictates a 10″ run while a 9″ rise would require a 9″ run.    In practice, I have found that anything outside of a 6″ to 8″ rise is uncomfortable for an actor to navigate.

If you were to measure the steps in your home or place of employment, you would probably find that architectural standard tends to fall closer to 17 1/2 inches instead of 18.  I have not found that there is much of a difference in comfort between the two and the benefit of not having to work in halves of inches of elevation is usually quite helpful.  The steps of the Alice’s Trip stair unit consists of 6 1/2″ rise and 11 1/2″ run.

Another guideline that I adhere to is that every step in a run of stairs should be of uniform rise and run  This is because as a person walks up and down a stair, he or she becomes accustomed to the muscle patterns required to climb or descend them.  When navigating stairs, one becomes accustomed to relying on automatic processes freeing up concentration for matters other than climbing the stairs.  This is especially true of the actor on stage. Ascending or descending irregular steps requires full concentration and the lack of it, can be disastrous.    By extension, I have found that it is best that all steps on an entire set (including escape stairs) conform to the same ratio.

That’s enough for now! Have fun!  Be safe!

SJM

Construction of Stairs for the Stage: 1

One of the most common scenic elements that a theatre scene shop constructs is the stairway.

There are three main parts to a stair as the diagram to the left shows. The Tread is the horizontal surface on which the stair-climber walks. The Riser is the vertical element that fills the space between the back of one tread and the front of the next tread above it .  The Carriage provides the structural support to carry the weight of the stair-climber to whatever structure supports the two levels accessed by the stair and serves to hold the treads and risers in position.  Note that some stair units will omit the risers.

The carriage(s) of a stair may  be Open or Closed.  An open carriage stair (as illustrated above)  is easily identified by the saw-tooth profile of the stairs as seen from the side.  A closed carriage stair ( as illustrated below)  features carriages that are outside of the treads and risers and appear as a slope or ramp when seen from the side.

A stair may also be Independent or Dependent. An independent stair is self-supporting. Whether standing alone, apart from other scenery or pushed in place against and upper level, a person could climb from the bottom step to the top step without the unit tipping or falling over from lack of support.  By contrast, a dependent stair unit relies upon the structure of the upper level to support the weight of a person climbing the stair.  Note that in the example above, adding legs to the unsupported end(s) of the stair could convert a dependent stair to an independent stair at the cost of the visual clutter of the legs.

While the set designer specifies the outward appearance of a stairway seen onstage, depending upon your institutional organization, either a Production Manager, Technical Director, Master Carpenter or Scenic Carpenter makes the decisions on how a stair is constructed.  I have seen a number of methods over the years.  The most basic construction method relies upon brute strength.

The basic stair  usually starts with treads of ¾” plywood.  The plywood tread is supported front and back with structural lumber in the same way a basic stage platform might be.  Depending upon the width of the stair, strength necessary, standard construction practices of the shop and other matters, the stringers might be made of as substantial material as 2×4 to something as light as 1×3.

The outside edges of the tread are supported by carriages cut of ¾” plywood.  On a small stairway, the carriages may go all the way to the floor.

Stairs over 3′ wide might have one or more intermediate carriages between the outer ones to prevent unnecessary flex as a stair-climber places weight toward the center of the tread span.  If the stair is too tall  for a standard plywood carriage, because it cannot be cut out of a  4′ x 8′ sheet of plywood,  the carriage is often made of 1×12 or 2×12 instead.  The example to the left shows the construction of a stair with 2×12 stringers.

In all of these variations, the riser is mostly an after-thought, tacked in place after the rest of the structure is complete with little or no structural function. Usually, the front of one tread is even with the riser that fills in the space between it and the tread below.  This gives each step a flat front with no overhanging lip.

This type of stair unit has a number of drawbacks. Since most of the time, a designer will specify with a slight overhang of the tread over the riser, a decorative detail or Nosing must usually  be added to the front of each step.  This nosing is easily dislodged  by heavy foot-traffic.  Additionally, all of these construction methods tend to rely upon fasteners to bear most of the weight of each joint.  Those fasteners often hold into the laminated edge of plywood which is not a strong connection and does not serve as a good surface for glue.  The biggest drawback to the methods of stair construction described above is the failure of these construction methods to take advantage of all of the materials to provide structural support.  Consequently, some members such as carriages and stringers must be enlarged or extra ones added to provide support.  This adds considerable weight to the structure.

In the next installment, I will explore what I consider to be a better, stronger, lighter way of constructing stairs.

That’s enough for now! Have fun!  Be safe!

SJM

Taking Stock of the designandtechtheatre Blog

Those who have followed this blog will remember that I am a faculty member in the Theatre Department at a small regional Liberal Arts College in central Iowa and that I started this blog as a way to share any discoveries and revelations that I hoped to make during my sabbatical during the spring of 2012.  That sabbatical is now over. While on sabbatical I researched a number of newer lighting technologies that budgetary, resource, and schedule limitations at my school prevent me from adequately exploring under normal circumstances.

I began this blog in December of 2010 in preparation for the then-granted sabbatical scheduled to begin January 2012.  In that first year I wrote 13 blog posts (a little over one per month).   By contrast, between early January when my sabbatical leave began and late June when I took what was to evolve into nearly a 3-month hiatus, I wrote 46 blog entries and over 3300 words.  I am surprised to realize that this amounts to an estimated 132 pages of text.

I am a firm believer in visual images.  As numerous contributors to the Stagecraft Mailing list (on which I am a continual lurker and sometimes poster, and about which I have written in earlier entries in this blog) have said: “If there aren’t pictures, it didn’t happen”.  With this in mind, most of the blog posts contain several images: process photos, research photos, photos of materials, products and tools, photos of productions and finished products, graphs, charts and drawings.  I estimate that 1/4 or more of the physical content of each blog consist of such imagery.  As I review the content of the posts since my sabbatical leave began, I find that they cluster into several categories.

Of these posts, the bulk, 23,  deal directly with theatrical lighting.  The Lighting posts cover a wide range of subjects.  6 posts cover introductory material describing principles and processes that a lighting designer must be familiar with.   A 12-post series examines a basic system for lighting a sample stage space and explains the logic, planning and paperwork used by me for each step of the process.  A 3-post series (this series is incomplete and will one day expand to 6 or more posts) examines the DMX protocol and some of the capabilities and gear used in the industry to allow lighting control, dimmers and fixtures to communicate.  One of the posts examines the step-by-step procedure for repairing the burnt-out socket on an Altman Q-light, while another examines the lighting aesthetic, gear and effects of a major rock concert that I attended at Des Moine’s Wells Fargo Arena during the sabbatical.

9 of them document the process of designing scenery for two different productions for two different community theatre organizations.  4 of these examined the design and production (including construction) of scenery for The Quiet Man for Winterset Stage.  4 more entries covered the design and production of the setting for The Divine Sister for Stage West at Des Moines Civic Center’s Stoner Theatre.  An initial post described the circumstance of engaging the 2 projects within hours of one another and briefly outlined each project.

8 of the posts documented the process of remodeling my kitchen during the summer of 2010.  While the work was long finished before my sabbatical, I was caught up in the challenge that I set for myself of trying to document the techniques and materials that I used for the project, and in doing so in a clear, precise way.  I also intentionally tried to draw a connection between the skills that our students learn in constructing scenery and how many of those skills can be translated into lifelong pursuits beyond the theatre application.  Incidentally, one of these posts received the only directl feedback that any of my blog posts has received when a reader wrote to thank me for explaining the installation of glass tile backsplash.

Among the remaining blogs were topics as wide-ranging as: the process of creating a prop telescope for a 2010 production of The Learned Ladies for Theatre Simpson, the repair of an antique Windsor chair, musings concerning sabbatical volunteerism and service to community and a travelogue describing my attendance at the annual United States Institute of Technology (USITT) convention held in late March at the Staples Center in Long Beach California.

As I reflect upon all that was accomplished in this blog, I am also reminded of the many things that were not accomplished or that remain unfinished.  In addition to the unfinished series on DMX 512, I have not documented much of the research that I accomplished in the areas of LED lighting technology, lighting control consoles, or of moving light technology.  I have not even begun to record in this blog the many worthwhile and informative workshops that I attended at the USITT Long Beach convention, nor the interesting and important things that I learned from them.  I have not written up the observations that came from attending 3 additional rock concerts (all featuring the same band) in 3 wildly different venues, and on the impact that those experiences has had on my regard for some of the technologies involved,  nor have I recounted the demo session that I attended at a local lighting distributer of ETC lighting equipment.  In short, there is a lot of outstanding material left to share!

Even though there is a lot going on in my department and at my school right now, I am making the commitment to continue this Blog indefinitely.  I can probably only commit to an entry a week (rather than the target of 3 per week that I made and regularly hit weekly during the height of my sabbatical.)  In future posts I hope to share some of the research and insights described above, as well as share any new and developing events and discoveries that may be made along the way.  I will continue to strive to illustrate my commentary with informative images and graphics as well as to populate the text with meta-links to salient interweb sites.

 That’s enough for now! Have fun!  Be safe!

SJM

 

Building A Prop Telescope

A while back I had the opportunity to serve as Prop Master/Prop Designer  (as well as Technical Director) for our production of the Learned Ladies.  Staged by director Tom Woldt as if occurring the 1920s, the setting featured  Art Deco-inspired scenery and properties to match.  Guest set designer Amber Miller took a strong hand in the selection of much of the set props and set dressing picking out most of the major furniture items herself.  One set prop that she relied upon me to secure was the telescope  that was brought  onstage and set up at the top of the show and which remained onstage, in use by one of the characters off-and-on throughout the play.  The process that I followed in researching, designing, building and adapting this prop to the needs of the cast and the action of the play as staged is instructive as a model of the process for prospective Prop Master/Designers.

The only real data that I had (beyond that it should be an instrument circa 1920, that it had to be set up by cast members representing workmen at the top of the show and that another character from the play needed to appear to use it) was that the set designer wanted it “to be big” and that it was to sit roughly down center on our thrust stage aligned with our theatre’s central vommitory entrance.

circa 1918

circa 1913

1910s Telescope

I began the process by doing some research on the appearance of a period telescope.  In this manner, I learned that at the time, the bodies of telescopes usually appeared to be made of 3 or more brass cylinders of graduating sizes .  The tripod could be made of wood or metal. My first instinct was to try to borrow an authentic telescope, but after failing of find any leads at all, and recognizing that the modern telescopes that I had found at local thrift stores were unsuitable because of their lack of period appearance, I determined to construct one.

I made the drawing at right  to work out details of construction and to guide the purchase of material and hardware for the construction.  The original idea was to fabricate the telescope body using PVC pipe and standard pipe fittings.  However, after a trial fitting of the standard fittings it was clear that they needed to be adapted to make the lens tube appear more authentic.  In addition to trimming and sanding the fittings, some needed to be filled using epoxy putty.  I used PVC cement to join the tubes and fittings. A threaded rod inserted through the larger tube near the visual center of the tube secured the telescope to the wooden mount and permits the telescope to tilt through a wide range of inclination.

Tripod head parts before assembly

The mount is secured to a plate which, in turn is attached to the head of the tripod so as to allow the telescope to pan.   The tripod was made of clear birch.  Fittings on various parts of the tripod are carriage bolts and knobs from the local hardware store.  Fine brass chain and a steel ring with small split rings kept the tripod legs properly positioned (similar to that of the 1918 telescope research)

Detail of telescope mount and tripod head

Telescope on set of Learned Ladies

Once the prop began to be used for rehearsal, the director needed the overall height of the prop reduced so as not to be in the way of audience sight-lines.  With the lower stance the actress was unable to crouch low enough to peer through the original linear eye-piece, so I adapted the eyepiece to resemble that of the eyepiece arrangement evident in the 1913 telescope research.  I also had to insert and epoxy glue a small length of 1/2″ steel pipe into the narrow section of the telescope tube in order to balance the telescope on its mount and allow the actress using it to adjust it more easily.  Finally, a small circle of 1/2″ thick acrylic plastic inserted in the open end of the larger tube served to represent the lens.

The final finishes included several light coats of brass spray paint on the metal parts (telescope tube and knobs) and stain and  polyurethane on the wood parts of the tripod

That’s enough for now! Have fun!  Be safe!

SJM

Furniture Repair: A Reed-Bottomed Comb-Back Windsor Arm Chair

I recently got to exercise some of my prop carpentry skills when I repaired my Mother-in-law’s broken chair.

When my step-father-in-law moved out of our home a couple of years ago after the death of my wife’s mother (his spouse) he left a number of their belongings including some broken furniture.  This past summer while cleaning out a basement storage room, I ran across a remarkably delicate reed-bottomed comb back Windsor arm-chair. I remember admiring the chair  when they moved in and the thin wooden spindle was broken at the time.  My wife wanted to get rid of it but I couldn’t bring myself to give it away to a thrift store like she wanted to do so I kept pulling it out of the “donate pile”  It is not like we need another chair.  I just like it.

Curious pencil-marks on the bottom of the seat

A little research suggests that the form of my chair owes more to the American influence on the Windsor style than to the English prototypes.  Furthermore, the reed seat on my chair is an unusual feature on a Windsor chair.  An examination of the chair itself reveals that it seems to have been made of single-species of a medium to light-colored wood featuring a soft straight grain.  The chair is stained with a dark finish and appears to never have been painted (18th and 19th century Windsor chairs were most commonly painted with milk-paint).  The underside of the chair seat and arm show what look to be saw-made tool marks.  Markings on wooden parts of the seat-bottom appear to have been made with pencil.  Several of the marks are unintelligible, but one sequence appears to be: “16 H B”.   This may be somewhat intriguing, but these observations suggest to me that the chair is of no great age and probably dates no earlier than the late 1800s or early 1900s.

There the broken chair sat on my workbench at the end of my shop…I mean at the end of my garage while I occasionally considered how to go about repairing it.  I had gotten far enough to decide that I needed to replace the broken spindle with a  a new one. This required disassembling the top member and arm sweep in order to replace it.  Lacking a lathe I was a little stymied as to how to replace the broken spindle.  After working with the cherry hardwood when building the table for my kitchen and having some left-over wood from that project, I  was inspired to attempt shaping a new spindle using a bench sander.  I started by ripping a blank from the scrap cherry wood to slightly larger than the outside diameter of the other outside spindle.  I spent about a half of an hour of sanding, with frequent pauses to compare diameters of different sections of the other outside spindle to the one that I was fashioning using a caliper micrometer before I judged that I had sanded away everything that wasn’t spindle  Constant turning during the sanding process yielded a very round cross-section.  I continued sanding by hand with 100 grit sandpaper to further shape the spindle to match the graceful curved taper of the companion.  A succession of sanding with progressively smother sandpaper left the spindle with a butter-smooth surface.

Even though I don’t think that the chair has any great intrinsic value, I didn’t want to destroy the original finish by completely refinishing all of the old parts, but I did want to give the new part a similar appearance.  I used some dark mahogany rubbed stain on the new spindle and wiped it down with a rubbed polyurethane finish.  Then I used a product labeled Howard Restor-A-Finish in walnut that I have used on some of my older furniture to rejuvenate the finish by darkening scratches and blemishes on the original parts of the chair.  I reassembled the chair, scraping the old glue off the tenons and out of the sockets and used epoxy glue to secure the parts.

I am both pleased and slightly surprised at how quickly and easily the repair of the chair was.  It took no great craftsmanship and only the simplest of tools, yet the rehabilitated chair is study and whole with small evidence of the repair.  I only wish that all of the chairs that I have been called upon to repair for theatrical productions had been as easy and as successful.   While the repaired chair may not be valuable, I do believe that it is quite handsome and  I expect to use and treasure it for years to come.

For information on windsor chairs, check out the following:

• The History of the American Windsor Chair Revolution in the New World
• The Craftsmanship of Philadelphia Windsor Chair Maker Joseph Henzey
• Windsor Chair Online: Source for Chair Kits & Parts

That’s enough for now! Have fun!  Be safe!

SJM

“Bobblehead” Madonna For The Divine Sister

Sunday June 24 the Stage West company struck the set of “The Divine Sister” after the matinée performance.    My last responsibility for the production is to return the borrowed items: a street lamp to DMMO and an oversized bench, a bicycle, and a tea set to Theatre Simpson (both in Indianola).  Meanwhile, I wanted to share the design process for the Madonna statue that is integral to the plot.  As I shared in the preceding post, having run across the image of the bobblehead Madonna and Jesus while casting about for a design “hook” for the figures in the stained glass, I was compelled to introduce a similar style into the Madonna statue.

 

The excerpt from the technical drawing to the left shows the initial concept.  My plan was to begin with a standard Madonna figurine and to craft an enlarged head for it of paper mache.  To create the drawings, I imported PDFs of a figurine photo and the Madonna bobblehead figurine into the VectorWorks file.   I used known dimensions of an available Madonna statue  to scale the Madonna JPG and used the 2D Polygon drawing tool to create the line-work.

After securing the statue from a local garden center, I set about fabricating the paper mache head.  I began the process by securing an inflated 8″ toy ball from a local Wal-Mart.  I covered this with a  layer of  paper mache created with overlapping strips and shreds of newspaper  glued in place with Elmer’s white glue.  Even though I would eventually need the bottom of the head open to mount it on the statue, I coated the entire ball.

Next, I began building the features up on the paper mache ball with a papier-mache product called “Claycret”, using sculpting tools to create the features.  After roughing in the face, I hot-melt glued an apron of bristol board to create the foundation for the veil head-cloth.  This was the first time that I used this particular product.  I found that it dried slowly, requiring 24 hours (a mixture of direct sunshine and a fan overnight) of low humid conditions to dry.

The face and veil required 5 or more applications of Claycret for me to achieve the depth and level of detail owing both to the product’s inherent low threshold of adhesion and to the highly dimensional shape that required sculpting.  Even after I was satisfied with the sculpting, I was not pleased by the cottage-cheese texture that seemed to be the natural state of the Claycret product.  I began rectifying that with a skim-coat of  common joint compound.

Fearing that the dried joint compound would crack, I brushed on a couple of coats of thin-mixed Durham’s Rock Hard Water Putty.  This product dries quickly and in my experience, is “rock-hard” when dry.  because of these characteristics, it only took a day to apply 3 coats with light sanding between each.  In addition to creating a hard smooth surface, I was able to add additional fine detail with the Water Putty.

My next challenge would be to find a spring to create the Bobble-Head action.  The spring would need to have firm action and an open structure.  By coincidence, I had repaired one of the sprinklers in the irrigation system in my front yard.  I chanced to take apart the broken unit and discovered an ideal spring within the mechanism.  The spring was a little too long for my application, but I was able to trim it to the appropriate length with a common bolt-cutter.

I affixed the spring securely to the head of the purchased Madonna sculpture using a 2-part epoxy putty that I found at the local Big-Box home improvement store.  This product contains a central core of one part wrapped in a thin layer of the 2nd part.  To activate it, one cuts an appropriate volume off the “stick” and knead it thoroughly for about a minute.  Once activated, it can be adhered and shaped for 5-10 minutes before it loses workability and begins to cure.

I cut open the bottom of the ball that formed the foundation of the papier-mache bobblehead, pulling out the deflated plastic ball.  I also cut a short section of the base of the sprinkler housing and used more epoxy putty to affix the cap on the inside of the papier-mache bobblehead.  This acted as a socket positioning and holding the head in place atop the Madonna statue.   In the photo to the left you can see the sprinkler-housing through the enlarged opening in the bottom of the head.

Both the statue and the papier-mache head were painted using the primary, secondary and earth-tone paint described in the preceding post.

The resulting sculpture took about 2 weeks to complete and was barely finished in time for 1st tech.  While most of that time was necessary for drying-time, I put about 20 hours of actual labor into the sculpting and painting.

Bobblehead Madonna reinforced the images from the stained-glass and helped to create a unified “world” for the play.

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Bobblehead Madonna is visible to the extreme left of the production photo of  The Divine Sister above.

That’s enough for now! Have fun!  Be safe!

SJM

Stained Glass Windows For The Divine Sister

In my third post concerning the recently opened  (June 15 at Stoner Theatre, Des Moines, IA) production of The Divine Sister, I wanted to describe the conception and execution of the stained glass windows that were a prominent feature of the set.  I described earlier that I imagined stained glass windows in the setting at my initial reading and that I learned that the original off-broadway (maybe off-off…but who’s counting the number of offs?) featured wacky parables in stained glass. Since the script makes no direct reference to stained glass windows, nor the subject matter, I was free to use my imagination in designing them.

By breaking the two walls with asymmetrical windows, I converted an otherwise symmetrical backing to the wide, shallow thrust of the Stoner theatre.  I conceived of a triptych of 3 lancet windows in the SR walls and a wider landscape arched window on SL.  The subject for the SL window was suggested in a conversation with the director when we were brainstorming the end of the show.  We were discussing what games might be featured at the bazaar that the sisters are holding in scene 12.  One of us suggested a shooting gallery where the targets were the disciples at the last supper.  While that idea was retained in the form of a sign advertising a “12 disciples shooting gallery”, it also sparked my imagination. I remembered the ambiguous gender of the figure to Christ’s right in the Da Vinci “Last Supper”.  Since one of the plot points of The Divine Sister revolves around “Joan, the older sister of Jesus”  and since the convent is discovered to be the final resting place of her remains, it felt right to include this homage to the “Da Vinci Code” in the spirit of the text.

With the subject matter of the single window chosen, the subject matter of the triptych sprang quickly to mind.  Since the “Last Supper” falls at the end of Jesus’s mortal life, something from the beginning of it was in order.  Since the play revolves around secrets kept, something pertaining to hidden knowledge would be suitable.  The idea of “See no evil; Hear no evil; Speak no evil” only with the “Three Wise Men” instead of monkeys came immediately to mind.  I looked up the latin translation:  malus non vide; malus non aude; malus non loquere and included them in the designs.

Not content with realistic a realistic representation of the chosen subject matter, I cast about for a distortion or abstraction that might add another level of irreverence and whimsy to the windows.

My inspiration came from a parallel challenge that the text offers.  One of the few  clues that the text gives concerning the courtyard is that Agnes spends some time tending to a statue of the Madonna.  As I was thinking of some way of distorting that iconic detail, I ran across the image to the left.  The “bobble head Mary” seemed a perfect distortion, one that could be carried through in the figures in the window as well.

I researched different styles of stained glass windows (some of which research was displayed in the  preceding blog).   Even though the windows on the set were to be rendered in false perspective, I drew the window cartoons without distortion.

The three kings were largely an invented mash-up of a number of images that I researched.  The “Last Supper” was simplified, retaining only 5 of the original figures in roughly the same orientation to one another as the original (though compressed to create a more compact composition.  The subject of the feast: a pizza, a “B ig Mac” and some beers (in iconic pub-style glasses) is an attempt at irreverent humor.  All of the figures clearly feature oversized heads and stick necks typical of the “bobble head” motif.

I used Photoshop to introduce the cartoons into the distorted shapes of the false perspective window shapes of the set.

The mostly finished pre-distortion rendering of the “Last Supper” window depicts the color palate.

Rather than try to execute the windows in some exotic (read expensive) material, I decided to go old-school and create the windows out of plain old muslin.  Paint also became a challenge.  Stage West’s stock of paint consists of dribs and drabs of nondescript colors of house paint.  While I would have preferred to use theatrical paint, I am quite comfortable using paint from the local hardware or big box store.  My strategy was to pick high-chromaticity colors from the color chips available at the paint counter.  One of the tricks is to pick the colors that rely on a base with the minimum amount of filler.  Most paint suppliers describe that as neutral or ultra-deep base.  If the chip doesn’t have the base identified, you can usually count on the neutral base being used for the deepest, most vibrant color on the chip.  When in doubt, ask the paint technician.

Another trick that I use  is to ask the technician to leave out any white or black pigment.  This works well at the local hardware store where the mixing process is manual, but the technician at the Menard’s where I bought my paint did not know how to “trick” the automated mixing system into omitting the undesirable pigments.  The white and black pigments increase opacity (an undesirable characteristic for this project) but are important to help coverage in a home or house-painting application.

For the windows, i selected  colors representative of the watercolor paints that I used to paint the rendering.  Thus, I chose a primary red, yellow and blue.  I also selected secondaries orange, green and violet.  I selected a yellow-green instead of a perfect secondary hue and two versions of violet (red-violet and blue-violet).  I also picked a couple of earth-tones (burnt sienna and yellow ochre).   I had the technician mix quarts of each.  At $8 each, the cost of paint for the windows was around $100.

After covering the frames for the windows with muslin and letting it dry for 24 hours, I  sized  with white glue and water. I used an overhead projector to project perspective versions of the cartoons onto each window, tracing with wide black sharpie marker.   Painting proceeded in paint-by number fashion with each color thinned to the consistency of skim milk.  It is better to err on the side of too thin (you can always add another wash if the first try is too faint) rather than put on the paint too thick (which will prevent back-lighting from achieving the desired translucent results).  Once the painting was finished, I brush-coated the front of each block of color with clear water-soluble gloss polyurethane.  After the front was dry, I brushed the same polyurethane on the back of each window.  The purpose of the polyurethane is to catch the backlight and to provide a sense of sheen to the front surface when not back-lighted.  In my experience, it is best to expect to put 3 or more coats on the front to achieve a glass-like sheen, but I only got one coat on this project.  I was prepared to finish the stained glass windows by re-lining the led-lines with dark-grey paint to increase opacity and to cut out any unwanted polyurethane sheen, but I fount that it was unnecessary in this case.

That’s enough for now! Have fun!  Be safe!

SJM

The Divine Sister: Unit Set Production Photos

The production of The Divine Sister that opened June was the Iowa premiere of the play by Charles Busch.  The play is set in a variety of locations in Pittsburgh in 1966.  The main location is the cloister of St. Veronica’s convent school, but the action unfolds in 11 scenes and alternates with other locations including the street in a fashionable part of town, the sitting room of a grand mansion in the city, and the catacomb of St Veronica’s.

Scene 1, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 9, Scene 11: The school courtyard of St. Veronica’s convent school.

Most of the action unfolds in the courtyard of St Veronica’s school.  I envisioned the setting as the corner of a cloister.  Throughout the play the Mother Superior and the nuns of St. Veronica’s are trying to raise funds to tear down the dilapidated structure.  It is also described as having “rare Gothic details”.  The script  also spoofs just about every nun movie ever made.  When I read the script, I imagined stained glass windows on whimsical, irreverent subject.  While further researching the play, I learned that the original production featured a series of stained glass windows depicting the hand of God reaching down from heaven to perform mundane tasks such as grilling steak, raking leaves and watering flowers.  I took the images in a different direction (see the next post on the stained glass windows).  Meanwhile, the false perspective of the cloister walls allowed the suggestion of a more sculptural space than the sight-lines of the wide shallow thrust of the acting area permitted while the low-angle distotion created a feeling of unbalanced precariousness.

Scene 2, Scene 8:  A dark secret room underneath the convent.

Scenes 2 & 8 occur in a secret room under the convent that turns out to be a a catacomb or crypt containing the remains of a long-lost relative of Jesus.  The unit set featured an oversized stone bench CSR.  While the unit set remained essentially unchanged.  The director staged the scene around and to SR of the oversized stone bench that sat CSR. Meanwhile, the Lighting Designer brushed the stage with a gobo texture featuring an angular, bar like pattern.  Cool blue color and low intensities contribute to the sense of creepy foreboding suggestive of such a location.

Scene 3: A street in a fashionable part of town

In the 3rd scene Mother Superior and Sister Acacius are on their way to visit Mrs. Levinson, whom they hope will offer her mansion as an interim school and convent.  They are walking down a fashionable street.  Since the scene is one of the shortest of the play, it didn’t make much sense to engage in a major scene shift.  We added a lamp-post to suggest a street corner and the staging and lighting restricted the action to the DS & SL portions of the stage.  Although the prop lamp was capable of being lighted, since the scene takes place during the afternoon, we decided to forgo running the circuit to it.

Scene 4, Scene 7, Scene 10: The sitting room in Mrs Levinson’s grand mansion.

Mrs. Levinson’s house was created on the unit set by introducing a  Victorian Eastlake style settee and matching chair.  Props to Austin Kopsa who knew exactly where to find the often-hard-to-come-by set/furniture props.  The bench-high low wall DSL doubled in this scene as a table  and held a tea service, ash tray and other hand and food props that were needed for the scenes.  The action in Mrs. Levinson’s house was restricted to the SL side of the stage, except for a flashback in scene 4 where Jeremy (Mrs. Levinson’s house guest) re-lives meeting a young girl-reporter and her sidekick (younger  versions of Mother Superior and Sister Acacius).

Scene 12: A charity bazaar.

 While the script doesn’t give too many clues about the location of the charity bazaar, it made a lot of sense that it be in the courtyard of the school. We created a series of sandwich-style signs that Sister Acacia puts out at the opening of the scene.  The signs advertise “fishers of men fish-bowl-toss”, “12 Disciples shooting gallery”,  and  “Dunk the Nun”.  Sister Acacia’s first line of Scene 12 is “Sister Michael, raise these lights a little higher…”  This suggested the strings of colored lights that we rigged during the scene shift between scene 11 & scene 12.

That’s enough for now! Have fun!  Be safe!

SJM

A Set Design for The Divine Sister

My attention has been directed toward the design, execution and painting of the set for Stage West‘s production of The Divine Sister at the Des Moines Civic Center’s  Stoner Theatre.  It opened on Friday, June 15.  I committed to this project on Friday, April 13 about the same time that I committed to Winterset Stage’s The Quiet Man.   Although the first meeting that I had with the Director Deena Conolly of Drake University’s Department of Theatre, the construction of the set did not begin until May 25.  By April 26 I had produced the following sketch.

I blogged earlier about making measurements of the Stoner theatre to compliment the PDF plan of the space that I got from Stage West’s Production Manager.  I imported the PDF into a VectorWorks file and used that drawing in conjunction with the dimensions to create the floor plan.

The floor plan reveals a very shallow angle on the intersecting false perspective walls behind a roughly 16′ deep x 28′ wide thrust.  Bench-height platforms against the walls serve as seating areas and provide opportunity for elevation for certain extreme moments during the action of the play.  A similar seating element DSL  provides motivation for DSL crosses and anchors the DSL actor-entrance.  Similarly, a low platform and a Madonna statue (called for by the script) anchors the DSR entrance.  A bench off-center stage provides more interest to staging and serves as a obstacle for the actors and directors to help induce interesting movement.

On April 29 I also circulated 2 sheets of construction drawings which I published to the Director, the Production Manager and to the Master Carpenter using a Dropbox folder (a free “cloud”-based file sharing service).

During the  following few days, I exchanged several e-mails with Paul Mostrom (the Master Carpenter) who would be responsible for building the set.  He expressed concern with the overall height of the set  and by the size of the units which I had indicated that the set should be  broken into.  As it turned out,  the units might have been both a challenge to build in Stage West’s shop and to maneuver into the Stoner Theatre in the sizes that I had specified. However, the height should have cleared the lighting catwalks overhead by over  6″.  Paul was also insistent that the scenery must be built as Hollywood/TV Wing flats instead of the standard-framed flats that I had envisioned (mostly for the knife-edge, cut-out quality that that construction would lend to the flattage).

One of the quirks of the Stage West company, is that no individual holds the title of  “Technical Director”.  Although there is a Production Manager, and a Master Carpenter, there is nobody clearly responsible for coordinating the construction of the setting between the Set Designer and the Master Carpenter.  When I hold the position of Technical Director, I try to communicate clearly between the designer and the shop to assure that the setting is, in my estimation, appropriately conceived for the space, budget, skills and manpower resources available.  I also reserve the right as Technical Director to inform the Designer that redesign is necessary when it appears to be so.  On the occasions that I designed scenery for the Des Moines Metro Opera (DMMO), the Production Manager has assumed that responsibility.  You may recall that early in the process of designing The Quiet Man, I determined that my aspirations were too grandiose for the budget and I had to revise the design (mostly by cutting those elements that could be cut).

In the case of the set for Divine Sister, I was fairly certain that the set was possible, and had no indication that the budget was in jeopardy.  However, By May 11, days before construction was to begin, it was clear that Paul was not enthusiastic and was dragging his feet concerning the set as proposed. Sensing that I was going to continue to have problems with his enthusiasm for the project unless I made an extraordinary attempt to adjust the design to his concerns (and fearing the consequence of not doing so) I undertook a crash redesign of the set, retaining as much of the qualities that I found most appealing, but reducing the quantity of scenery and giving in to Paul’s preferred method of construction.

The re-envisioned setting was nearly identical in plan, but it also required re-drawing the wall elevations.  These were published and circulated via Dropbox.

Overall, I was well pleased with the redesign.  It accented the outline of the windows, and leaves the upper profile edgier and unsettled.  This coincides with both the story (the cloister is supposed to be dilapidated) and with the format of the play (which has an odd “sketch” quality to it).

These are a few of the initial images that I used to inspire the set design for Stage West’s The Divine Sister.

In following posts  I will explore additional design challenges, solutions and details.   Meanwhile, below is a photo of the completed set:

That’s enough for now! Have fun!  Be safe!

SJM